Earlier today, I was listening to a podcast about the duality of the heart and the brain—how we tend to separate them, as if one is logic and one is emotion, as if they play tug-of-war inside us. But the host mentioned that in many ancient cultures, the divide wasn’t seen as a battle at all. The heart and the brain were partners, each with their own kind of intelligence.
And that lingered with me long after the episode ended.
I thought of the Mayan worldview, how they believed the heart wasn’t just a source of feeling but the very center of consciousness. The heart was where intention lived. It’s where truth spoke first. The brain, meanwhile, was memory, story, pattern, the keeper of vision. You needed both to move through the world with clarity and meaning.
For so long, I lived as if I had to choose.
Be rational. Be emotional. Be guarded. Be open.
Pick one. Stay in the lines. Survive.
Sometimes survival made me all brain—overthinking, controlling, scanning the horizon for danger like a crow perched high above. Other times, trauma cracked me wide open, and I became all heart—raw flame, burning too hot, spilling emotion everywhere because I didn’t know where to place it.
But the longer I sat with that podcast idea, the longer I thought about the Maya, the more I realized:
I was never meant to be one or the other.
None of us are.
The heart holds a kind of knowing that can’t be explained.
The mind holds a kind of feeling that can’t be denied.
And when they work together, life becomes something fuller—less about surviving and more about experiencing.
It mirrors my crow-and-flame symbolism perfectly.
The crow is the brain:
the observer, the analyst, the survivor with sharp eyes and sharper instincts. It sees what others miss. It remembers what others forget. It protects.
The flame is the heart:
the heat, the color, the pulsing impulse to love, to hope, to rise again even after everything falls apart. It burns with truth. It transforms.
Neither is enough alone.
But together?
Together they are a whole human, a complete story, a person who can feel deeply and still make sense of the world, who can see clearly and still allow themselves to open.
The Maya understood that thousands of years ago—that the heart thinks, the mind feels, and the real wisdom is letting both speak, letting both guide.
And today, listening to that podcast, I felt something loosen in me.
Something soften.
Something click.
Maybe I am not too much.
Maybe I am not “conflicted.”
Maybe I am simply human—complex, layered, ancient in my own way.
A crow with vision.
A flame with purpose.
A woman learning how to hold both without apology.
Because the truth is, the heart and the brain were never enemies.
They were always meant to carry the weight together—
two voices, two truths, one life lived with both clarity and fire.
Crow and Flame 